Here is a post of mine from a previous thread. It's a summary (although it gives the gyst of it).
[QUOTE="YellowOneKinobi"]
Lately I've been avoiding posting in the religious themed threads because it's been my experience that they go nowhere. People go back and forth arguing a matter of faith by attempting to use the scientific method. To me, that makes little sense. However, that being said I find this particular topic a little intriguing.
I can't speak about anyone else but myself, so I'll just give a very brief history of the process of my conversion.
- Technically, I was born into a Jewish family. While they/we identified as Jewish, we were in no way a religious family. To be honest, the only way anyone could be able to tell we were Jewish would be to see a Manorah in the window during Hanukkah. As a child religion wasn't really part of my life and I never really thought about God at all. I really didn't have an opinion on the matter at all.
- As a teenager, like many other teenagers/young adults I was convinced I knew EVERYTHING. I was a devout atheist because if something couldn't be proven beyond any and all doubt, then it was nothing less than hogwash. I wouldn't go out of my way to ridicule religious people (as I see far too often here and in the real world) because I really didn't care what other people believed. "Don't bother me and I won't bother you" would be one way to describe it.
- When I was in my mid to late twenties I would ponder "the meaning of life" types of things (for back of a better phrase). I wondered if there is more to the world around me than meets the eye. I started to think about how we all got here (not just people, but the universe for that matter) with an evolving sort of "philosophy". (Again, for back of a better word). Forgetting about Judaism, Islam, Christianity or any other religion for the moment, the first question I sought an answer to was "Is there a God?"
- The more I thought about it, to more I started to think that there certainly could be. I began to look at the world again and noticed that literally nothing in the natural world is wasted. One animal defecates, and another animal/insect like a dung beetlecarts it off, as an example. If nothing gets wasted, I pondered, why is it impossible to think that people have a 'spiritual side' for a reason? I suppose one could argue that it has some type of ancient survival reason, and that might be partially true, but in my opinion I sensed that it is for more than ONLY that.I have neither the time nor the desire to go on and on about this, but over the course of a few years I came to the decision that there is, in fact, a God.
-Istarted reading about religions in general. Some things seemed to make sense while other things did not. Over time, I found myself drawn to Catholicism. A few years ago my wife (who wasn't particularly religious, yet was raised in a Catholic home) and I decided to go to Mass one Sunday afternoon. It was a wonderful experience. A lot of people make all kinds of accusations about religious services being nothing more than indoctrination attempts. Perhaps that is true in some place, but that was certainly not the case here. It was a Roman Catholic church if that means anything to anyone.
-After attending Masses for a year or so, I felt compelled to sign up for a year long RCIA class (Rites of Christian Innitiation for Adults). My wife, whom was baptized as a child but never received her confirmation decided to sign up as well. It was a long journey (not to say that it was joyless). Anyway, this past Easter Vigil I was baptized, and we both received our confirmation and communion (along with some other people that were in the class).
So, that's one individual story of "How can an atheist ever convert to a religion?"
As a side note, and again I can only speak for myself, I am certainly a religious person but I don't shun findings made by science in any way. I work in Civil, Structural and (to an extent) Mechanical Engineering by trade, so I can certainly appreciate the sciences. My wife works in the medical field, so she has a huge appreciation for advances made in medicine. I think thatGod set theuniverse in place, and science is our way to learn about His creation.
I personally believe in evolution, but I think the species have been "guided" in a way. I don't take each individual word of the Bible literally (for reasons including but not limited to the fact that I can't read it in it's original language). I do take some stories metaphorically. Sort of like how God did, in fact, make man from clay. Sort of like us evolving from that primordial ooze.
I could go on and on but theres no reason to really. I'm at work and wrote this off and on so I hope it makes any sense (gramatically that is). I guess in closing I'd just say that I think sometimes people have a huge miconception about "religous people" as if they are all fanatics that do nothing but pray all day and follow some priests orders. From my experiences, couldn't be farther from the truth.
YellowOneKinobi
I'll be honest when I read your name I didn't want to read your post, since we very often disagree on the middle east. But since I started the thread, I owed it to people posting about their.. awakening (if you want to call it that) and I found your story generally very enjoyable to read.
Edit: We might not agree on the middle east (and Israel in specific), but at least we can agree that there is a God.
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